


And all for love, and nothing for reward

by macabreverbosity



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aura AU, Eventual Smut, Force Soulmates, Hux can see auras, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, eventual weird aura sex, weird aura shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 19:06:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7234891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabreverbosity/pseuds/macabreverbosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux had once, a substantially long time ago, thought the colors beautiful as they were terrifying. Graceful, beatific, almost, in that terror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And all for love, and nothing for reward

**Author's Note:**

> As always, the explicit rating is for later chapters.  
> Title from Book II, Canto 8, Stanza 2 of The Faerie Queene by Edmond Spenser
> 
> "There will be time, there will be time  
> To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
> There will be time to murder and create,  
> And time for all the works and days of hands  
> That lift and drop a question on your plate;  
> Time for you and time for me,  
> And time yet for a hundred indecisions,  
> And for a hundred visions and revisions"
> 
> \- ”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S Eliot

Hux had once, a substantially long time ago, thought the colors beautiful as they were terrifying. Graceful, beatific, almost, in that terror.

He had never quite grasped what it was that he saw exactly, it was still mostly a mystery to him; although he’d looked. He’d spent hours pouring over textbooks and archives to no avail.

For a short time Hux had thought himself insane. Surely, surely he was out of his wits; it just was not normal. Hux knew for a fact that his father would be displeased if Hux even dared to breathe a word of his difference to anyone. The backhand the young Hux had been dealt—he'd been left to bleed on the pristine white marble floors of his father’s study until he had gathered the wits to still his heaving chest and leverage himself off the ground, it had been the last time he'd told his father much of anything—when he’d told his father had been perfectly unequivocal. Hux would not bring shame onto his father and that was final. So not a soul had been made aware of how the General was _special_.

And he was; special that is. Hux had been ten years old when his peculiar gift had manifested.

It had been his tenth birthday and he’d woken up early, excited for the day. His father had promised him a special gift and would not tell him what it was and he had been promised a party. Hux knew it would not be the type of party that a child would enjoy but rather a perfunctory soiree for his father’s military friends to gather around and his father to show he cared about his only son after the tragic death of his wife. The young Hux knew all this perfectly well, yet, he was excited nonetheless.

He’d woken up buzzing with energy and awareness that had not registered at first. In retrospect, he should have known something was remiss at that point. Hux had never been—and continued to not be—a morning person.

The large house had been quiet and cavernous, the dawn’s light filtering in from the long picture windows and cut shadows across the marble floors of the large foyer. It was striking and Hux had paused to admire the view for a few moments before he continued on his way. He reached the large double doors to the spacious veranda and walked through them, inhaling the morning air—dew heavy and fragrant.

He looked down to the streets that snaked like tiny capillaries in between the squat houses, the people just stirring from their stupors into wakefulness and milling about to attend to their tasks. That’s when Hux had first seen it.

He was focused on a woman picking flowers from a nearby garden when a swath of pink color began to form around her. It swirled out with small snaking tendrils that seemed to melt into the air seamlessly. Hux had blinked a few times, astonished and horrified. The swirling hypnotic swell of colors was lovely and yet so very sickening. When a young man had approached the woman—His aura had been a bright forest green—and their colors had reached out for each other; Hux felt his stomach roil. He’d managed to run to the refresher and throw up bile into the nearest container, which just so happened to be the trash can.

Hux at the time had dismissed it. A one off, he’d told himself. A fluke. This was nothing to concern himself with. He was a Hux and he would not be intimidated so easily.

Then his father had descended the stairs and Hux had wanted to be violently sick yet again.

Hux’s father’s aura was thin and of the darkest emerald green Hux had ever seen. It had made Hux sick just to look at it; a twisted feeling writhing in the pit of his stomach. There were no swirling tendrils, merely precise lines that clearly delineated the parameters of the aura, marking it as separate; other. There were slight flecks of what seemed to look like black soot or ash, carried by an invisible breeze, undulating slightly.

Later on, Hux would find out what the colors meant and why they would affect him in any way. His father’s thin dark green aura had been indicative of a petty, envious and vindictive soul, the thinness of the aura only emphasizing the utter lack in his father and it only seemed to grow more narrow as time wore on and hardened the former Commandant further.

Not that there had been anything soft about Brendol Hux to begin with. A younger Hux had learned that lesson at a very young age and had carried it with him until he’d been shipped off to the Military Academy at Arkanis, one of the sectors of the Outer Rim, a small planet where most of the remnants of the Galactic Empire had retreated to regroup.

Conditions in the Outer Rim had always been suboptimal. The weather cold and harsh during the Winter cycles; overcast and rainy during the Summer cycles. Due to the Resistance’s efforts to eradicate the remnants of the Empire there had been a galactic embargo on trade with the Outer Rim sectors that had caused famines on more than one occasion. Hux had been too young to remember but later on, when he had grown, he had seen it and a bitterness had taken root in his chest and unfurled its talons, sinking in deep. Hux suspected that this was the same bitterness that had consumed his father. Worn him thin and ragged. However, where it had destroyed the elder Hux, it had only fueled a young Hux’s ambition for greatness. He would never be a has been like his father.

Hux’s ability had only helped him during his time at the Academy. The colors he’d see had started to make sense as time went on, which was a comfort despite the acrid taste they left in his mouth and the bile that rose in his throat. The colors were mostly graceful; however, Hux found himself resenting them. They felt intrusive, an asset to be sure, but also a hindrance. Hux did not need to know what people thought or did not think of him. did not need to see other’s auras reach out to one another or find two people who were already connected and wonder about them; something far too close to human emotion for Hux’s liking. It almost felt like gossip.

He’d also learned to differentiate the colors and the parameters of the auras during that time according to how the colors made him feel and how they affected him. Nausea was always an ever present staple of the experience, unfortunately; however, Hux could sense other things under the initial vertigo.

Blue usually indicated a wise and hard working soul, Forest Green was a soul full of kindness and sincerity, Purple for loyalty and self confidence, Gold for ambition and grandeur, Yellow for recklessness, Red for anger and violence as well as sadness and agony, Pink for gentle and nurturing spirits, Emerald Green for envious and petty souls, Orange for natural leaders and responsible souls, and Silver for cocky and foolhardy souls. White and Black were usually accents to the primary overlay of colors, sometimes a person would have tendrils of another color mixed in with their predominant traits, others were very clearly monochromatic. The sizes of the auras usually indicated how strong or weak one’s soul was and how vibrant their life force was.

During his Academy days Hux had used this gift to take down his rivals with strategic plays on their emotions and emotional attachments. Hux could see the changes in the colors, the subtle shifts in shade and motion. Hatred was a darkening, thunderous affair that left a taste of ozone in the air. Love or lust was a languorous swirling haze, a blurriness around the edges. Happiness was a visible brightening accompanied by a strange sort of buzzing static in the air.

He had used their petty jealousies and paramours against them. He considered it practice for when he would one day be General, and he would be; Hux was sure of it. So he’d watched and he’d engineered their destructions with almost clinical precision. He’d maintained perfect grades and excelled in his practical training. All the while he had never breathed a word of what he could see.

He still had not the faintest clue what it was that he _could_ do, even after extensive amounts of research. He’d even read what limited documents had been available about The Force. He’d hoped to find out if maybe his peculiar gift was Force related, however, the documents proved to be ineffective and too sparse for any sort of confirmation or denial. At one point Hux had thought he was, perhaps, afflicted with some rare undocumented space disease and was sure he would die soon; as time worn on he’d dismissed that rather quickly as something his more dramatic proclivities had conjured up—proclivities he’d worked and trained hard to smother and excise from the root; buried under strict discipline and iron clad control.

So he had trained, he had graduated and he had been put into the field as a sniper. He was fearsome on the field, a true nightmare. He had felt at home in his tucked away sniper’s nest, his gun a mere extension of his being. He had been born for this. Ironically enough his successes on the field and his brilliant tactical maneuvers had been what had earned him swift promotions off the field and eventually he had reached the much sought after title of General of the First Order.

His gift—or rather curse, more like—remained secret and served him well. He could ferret out intentions and test loyalties while pitting people he saw as threats against one another. Hux had heard the whispers about him, his crew talking amongst one another, sotto voce. They were terrified was the gist of what Hux could gather from the gossip. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps that was for the best; at the very least fear ensured efficiency and if nothing else, fear could be turned to respect far easier than hatred could.

As a General, his successes had brought him to the attention of Supreme Leader Snoke, a sketchy and seemingly omnipotent force user that had taken a particular interest in the First Order. Snoke was most likely the closest thing to an all powerful entity Hux was willing to admit to existing in any shape or form in the known galaxies and oddly enough that was a comforting rather than disconcerting thought, especially now that Hux had been taken into the Supreme Leader’s confidence.

This sudden rise in importance and responsibility had been how Hux had somehow gotten himself into this situation. He wasn’t sure what he’d done in a former life—or this one for that matter—however he was fairly certain that, whatever it was, it did not warrant such torture. Surely the Force or whatever nonsense hocus pocus or deity that governed the galaxy would not be so cruel.

Hux had been called in to a rare but rather routine audience with the Supreme Leader. At the time he had assumed it had had something to do with the proposal he had submitted a week prior. His proposal for a weapon of mass destruction—he’d lovingly nicknamed _Starkiller Base_ —was his magnum opus and it was sure to carve him a place in history where he would never be forgotten. Thus, Hux had strode confidently to the audience chamber aboard his command ship, _The Finalizer_ , fully expecting his proposal to be accepted and scouting for a suitable planet to begin and the eventual construction of his super weapon would commence as soon as humanly possible.

What Hux had not; however, been expecting at the time was a complete dismissal or rather blatant disregard for his proposal and rather Snoke informing him of a new addition to ship. A force user who went by the moniker Kylo Ren—whatever dramatic ridiculous name that was supposed to be—and that this mysterious force user would be Hux’s co-commander. As if Hux needed a co-commander to run the affairs of his ship. It rankled, the seeming implication of inadequacy. Hux had to try very hard to keep his emotions from showing externally, it would be utterly undignified to let his ire out on the world over a trifling, yet, admittedly insulting implication. He elected to wait and listen to what the Supreme Leader would say next to make his life a living inferno.

"You must understand, General. Kylo Ren is my most prized pupil. He is integral to the success of this mission. He will speak with you upon his arrival to the ship in a week’s time and deliver the remainder of my orders. I trust you will not disappoint me, General." Snoke had said in his dismissive sort of manner, as though every word that left his lips carried with it a certain gravitas and morbidity; every syllable meant the life and death of galaxies. Hux had never been au fait at taking orders he did not agree with, however, like much of his misgivings about most things, he buried them and focused on completing the task at hand to the best of his capabilities.

"Yes, Supreme Leader." Hux had said dutifully, burying his ire and annoyance with sharing command under a veneer of respectful deference. His emotions were at times truly superfluous and it was during times like these that Hux truly appreciated the discipline he'd worked so hard to cultivate in himself. He was proud and he was efficient. He would complete his task flawlessly and when this Kylo Ren delivered rhe remainder of his tasks, he would complete them as well without incident or any cause for reproach.

Snoke had merely regarded him calmly, his wizened and scarred face betraying nothing—It was times like this where he wished he could see Snoke’s aura, to at least have some advantage in the situation, but he had never met the ancient force user and physical presence was imperative to the activation of his gift—before the oddly misshapen head had nodded once and the hologram flicked and went out. Left alone in the silence of the chamber, Hux wanted to scream.

As expected, Kylo Ren arrived a week later.

 Hux had made his way to the hanger where Kylo Ren’s shuttle was expected to arrive. A small detail of Stormtroopers had gathered in the hanger—protocol mostly, for show—and Hux was surprised to see Phasma making her way to stand beside him, a deferential nod of the helmet that he returned. Phasma’s aura was full and vibrant, blue with wisps of orange running through, it seemed to swirl around her in a subtle dance that made Hux dizzy more often than not.

Hux looked away quickly, trying his best to ignore the swirl of colors in his peripheral vision and center himself for the ordeal that was to come. Speaking of the devil, Kylo’s shuttle had chosen that exact moment to make its entrance, resting a fair distance from where the small gathering was situated. The shuttle was vaguely reminiscent of an Imperial ship Hux had seen in a text book perhaps, the ship had belonged to Darth Vader. An interesting choice, Hux muses.

The shuttle door opens, ramp lowering and a hulking figure dressed in a mass of black robes and a helmet with silver accents comes striding out, lumbering steps, as though he were weighed down by a great burden.

That, however, was not what had caught Hux so completely off guard. No. It was Kylo Ren’s aura.

Hux had never seen anything like it. It was immense, branching out at least a meter from the man’s hulking form and a dark blood red, like glittering rubies laced through with dark purples and silvers. The black tendrils swirled out like miniature claws, restless and searching. The aura seemed ashy some how, like soot suspended in the air, ash over glass or dust over moth’s wings—something he had seen only once as a child, an image that had stayed with him, something sad and forgotten stirring in his gut at the recollection.

Another revelation: Hux could not look away, he did not feel the usual sickness or disgust swell in his gut. He, instead found himself longing to touch, which was frankly disconcerting and horrifying. Conclusion: Hux was tragically going insane. There was really no other alternative he could fathom to this uncharacteristic lack.

When Kylo had gotten close enough to look over the General properly, something Hux had never seen happen towards him took place. Kylo’s aura had reached out to him—to his own aura and it had responded in kind, a sharp golden-orange mix—like a sunset—mingling in with red and ruby ash. Hux could _feel_ it, like someone had touched the very core of him and he fought very hard not to gasp. Kylo seemed unaffected by the contact. His aura, however, was buzzing with energy and Hux absolutely had to get away, immediately—juvenile, he knew; but it was imperative he removed himself from Kylo Ren’s disconcerting presence.

Indicating that Kylo Ren should be escorted to his rooms immediately, Hux pointedly ignores the tilt of a helmeted head and strides out of the hanger as though his world had not been tilted on its axis and then violently shoved out of orbit.

Hux was horrified—elated—disgusted—absolutely mesmerized. It had felt terrifying and absolutely amazing. It had taken his breath away and he wanted more. He hated himself really. It had still felt better than anything Hux had ever felt before in his entire existence.

Hux groans and rests his head with a quiet thud against the cool metal door of his room before entering.

He was so very fucked.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr [here](murderdollls.tumblr.com)  
> 


End file.
